Deglaciation ages and meltwater routing in the Fort McMurray region, northeastern Alberta and northwestern Saskatchewan, Canada

A field-based reconstruction of the deglacial paleogeography in the Fort McMurray area permits: 1) constraining the timing of meltwater routing to the Arctic from the present Hudson Bay drainage basin; and 2) minimum-age estimates for ice-margin positions that can be used to constrain ice-sheet modeling results. A downslope recession of the Laurentide Ice Sheet resulted in a series of proglacial lakes forming between the ice margin and higher land to the southwest. The paleogeography of these lakes is poorly constrained in part from the masking effect of boreal forest vegetation and map-scale issues. However, recent space-shuttle based DEMs increase the number and spatial extent of moraines identified within the study area resulting in a coherent pattern of ice margin retreat focused on the Athabasca River valley. An intensive lake-coring program resulted in a minimum ten-fold increase in the radiocarbon database used to limit moraine ages. Results indicate that deglaciation in this region was younger than previously reported, and it is likely that the meltwater could not drain northward to the Arctic Ocean from any source southeast of the Fort McMurray area until approximately 9850–9660 14C BP.